Monday, February 10, 2014

Meanwhile, In a Home Nearby

As sometimes happens, people who meet in faraway places turn
out to have roots in the same neighborhood back home. When I first met my future
husband, I was told he was from Houston, and he surely
must have been aware that I was from New
York. We met in California. Come to find out, years later,
his mother and mine grew up not sixty miles from each other in central Ohio.

It was pretty much the same way with the youngest Davis child—my grandfather,
Jack R. Davis. He met and married a woman from Florida
whose maternal relatives lived just a short drive up the road, the next
county over from Erwin, Tennessee.

As I go through the papers left behind by my aunt—and,
by extension, her parents before her—I’m beginning to reconstruct a few of the
details of family life for Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Davis of Columbus, Ohio. I couldn’t help but note
that, unbeknownst to me, my grandmother once took up an interest in family
history, herself, as revealed by letters she saved from correspondence
with both relatives and strangers researching the same family lines.

The letter I’ll begin sharing today was sent to my
grandmother—her name, given at birth, was Ruby, but she chose to change it,
unofficially, to Ruth in her adult years—by her aunt in Tennessee. It was obviously a letter
responding to my grandmother’s inquiries into some details about her parents’
history.

The woman sending the reply signed the letter, “Aunt Nellie.”
Her return address on the envelope—thankfully, saved as well, for the letter
itself contained no date—displayed Johnson City, Tennessee. An
easy fifteen miles up the road from Erwin, Johnson City and vicinity was home
to Ruby’s mother’s family, the Thomas T. Broyles family. Nellie, by now widow of
Thomas Franklin Jones, was born Mary Nellie Broyles on July 6, 1875, in nearby
Jonesborough in Washington
County—the younger (and
only surviving) sister of Ruby’s mother, Sara Ann Broyles McClellan. By the time of this letter in 1969, Nellie was well over ninety years of age.

Dear Ruby,

Your letter just received, from the
date, it was several days late, or I would have answered sooner. You want to
know when your parents married? Well do I remember. Also it is in my father’s
old bible as he kept everything written down, and I’ll say, “I’ve followed in
his footsteps all the way.”

17 comments:

Here's my small world story: my older daughter moved from Virginia to Savannah, Georgia to teach. She met her husband there. He was stationed in Savannah. His parents live in Atlanta. His mother and I were in college together (although we didn't know each other).

What a story, Wendy! It's always fun to find out those small world connections. I guess it's just a sub-function of that "six degrees of separation" concept, but it seems so unique when you discover a connection like that in your own life.

Not to the topic - but its been in my mind the last few posts where Stella Mabel Hines became "lost." The SSNs were given out around 1937-8-ish (the exact date eludes me) so any woman alive then would have registered with her name at the time? I assume if they were married they registered with their married name? However, most SSNs would be "maiden" names, correct?

I'm trying to "find" both Stella and Edna St. Clair (Far Side's mystery person) and am assuming Edna registered as a St. Clair since she married Henry Hank Walter in 1950-ish. But where is she? She would be 105 years old if still living - which is possible (not probable) - did she pass on and have no one to "register her death" with the SSN? Does this happen? Or was she married in the interim... and registered using an earlier married name?

Of course, Hawaii seems to be a "black hole" in the censuses not being a US State until (sort of) recently. I'm challenged - and probably defeated with these two (Mabel and Edna)!

Iggy, I've been mulling over your comment for a while now, especially since I've been wondering about Far Side's Edna, too. I think you're on to something, but perhaps with caveats. I think that if a working woman like Far Side's Edna had applied for her Social Security number as an unmarried woman, but subsequently married, she would be required to update her SSN information with the Social Security Administration. So I guess the real question is, when we access the SSDI with SSN records, are we accessing the most recent update to the record? Or the original entry?

However, there is a corollary to that search for pre-1951 Social Security applications: many of the people who filed in those early years were confronted with a different problem--that of having no official documentation of their birth date.

That's where the Delayed Birth Records file at Ancestry.com comes in so handy. While the records aren't guaranteed to represent the facts of what actually happened back at the time of birth, they are a point of assembled names, circumstances and dates that are relatively accurate--or at least guide us to a better picture of the way things really were.

I am wondering if, for both my Stella Mabel Hines and Far Side's Edna St. Clair, a search through the Delayed Birth Records wouldn't produce some helpful hints.

Another thought on searching the SSDI. This is something I used to do when the record file was still available at Rootsweb. It is very tedious, but sometimes produces results. You search for first name plus as many other details as can be searched for--date of birth, state of issue, etc. Don't include any surname. Then you plow through the kazillion results that come up, to see if you can narrow down and zoom in on one or a few possibilities to do further research on.

Of course, that would depend on which online services still include the SSDI. Many don't, anymore. And then, it would depend on whether they include other ways to search the data (besides just name). Perhaps I'll go give that a try with Stella...when I get a few spare hours to look ;)

Just checked the Delayed Certificate of Birth from the State of Tennessee for Stella Mabel Hines. It was completed in Erwin, Tennessee at the end of March, 1943. At that point, Stella signed her name as "Mabel Hines," leaving out the "Stella" entirely. She gave as her current address, "War Department, Box 2133, Atlanta, Georgia," providing an additional tiny glimpse into her life at the time.

So I suppose, given all this, that she could very well be the Mabel Hines I found in Deming, New Mexico. But I still want to check this out further ;)

I wonder what she was doing at the "War Department" and wonder if she was a WAC or even a WAAC. I know Westray Battle Boyce the head honcho for the WAAC served the 4th Service Command, based in Atlanta, Georgia.

I've been trying to search through military records online, but so far, with no luck. For all I know, she could just have been clerical support. But I did think about the WAC and WAAC possibilities. Also thought about looking into military burials...although, back in that time period, there wasn't widespread opportunity for women to become involved in the military, other than those narrowly defined roles.

I was just amazed when I found that letter. I had no idea my grandmother was keen on family history records. I found more indications of that interest besides this letter, by the way. If only I had known when she was still alive...

Betty, you are right about those old letters. No matter how mundane the topic, I always seem to be fascinated when I read those old letters--my family's or letters from total strangers. It's a little glimpse into a person's own life story.

I have been so negligent about commenting, Jacqi, but I am adoring the Erwin connection. Today's entry sent chills down my spine. Your Nellie lived only a block and a half from my great-grandparents in Johnson City. Your names today were so familiar to me that I dug around a bit. Her husband's death record ( http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?did=17&pidlist=2376-417827_2546-288800&o_iid=39552&o_lid=39552&o_sch=Web+Property&gss=angs&pcat=ROOT_CATEGORY&h=288800&db=FSTennesseeDeath&indiv=1&ml_rpos=2 ) gives a street address that shows up at the corner of Southwest and Maple. My Williams great-grandparents lived in the next block, at 415 W. Maple. I have no words for joy this gives me.

Oh, Susan, I have been thinking of you with each post I write in this series around the Nolichucky! Sometimes, I run into place names or terms and I think, "Susan would know what this is" and would be on the verge of emailing you.

How fascinating to find out that Aunt Nellie lived so close to your great-grandparents! Now there's another "close encounters" story! They likely knew each other, at least at the neighbors-and-acquaintances level, if not more.

Correspondingly, it sounds like you, yourself, may have known their descendants. Though I'm not sure how many Joneses from this specific line there might have been in Johnson City that you might know, I understand that Broyles is a prevalent surname in that area.

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.